There Have To Be More Than 100 Large Privately-Held US Restaurant Chains (Mostly Franchisees with Multiple Locations) As Well As More Than 20 Large Privately-Held US Hotel Chains (Mostly Franchisees With Multiple Locations) And With Both Having More Than 1,000 Employees Which Received Coveted Forgivable PPP Loans of $10 Mil or More in the $350 Bil First Round of Small Business Loans, Thereby Stealing This Money From Truly US Small Businesses Fighting to Survive in This Horrific COVID-19 Environment. The US Government Should Publicly Expose These Companies, Their Number of Consolidated Employees, the Amount of Their PPP Loans and With Which Bank, And Also Expose the Member of the US Congress Whose "Carve Out" Legislative Action Caused This Unfairness To Happen and Also Expose Both the Lobbyist and the Lobbying Organization Demanding That This All-Out Economic Assault on Truly Small Businesses To Happen and Also Having the Power To Get Their Wish.

Nearly 100% of franchisees are not publicly-held Companies but rather privately held companies,  Thus, they would not be filing their financial statements and other key information with the SEC.

Thus there is no way the public can know precisely how many franchisees have taken advantage of PPP Loans and how much money was involved.

However, all publicly-held companies are required to make an 8-k filing with the SEC for any new material financial obligation and PPP Loans would certainly qualify.

Bloomberg.com did an excellent job in finding 52 publicly-held companies which so far filed 8-k's with the SEC and which  disclosed information related to their PPP loans.  I verified the accuracy of their 52 Companies receiving PPP loans although I did find one that they missed.

Leading this list of these 52 Companies were six restaurant chains all receiving PPP loans of $10 mil or above.

These six Restaurant Chains received an average PPP Loan of $15.7 mil, had an average number of employees of 7,508 at the most recent fiscal year end, posted Average Total Revenues of $475 mil for the most recent fiscal year end and paid Average Total Compensation of $2.702 mil to its CEO in the most recent fiscal year that it was disclosed.

Of these six restaurant chains, a very large 331 store Wendy's franchisee ..... Meritage Hospitality Group ..... with 11,000 employees had the highest PPP loan of $29.1 mil.  For some reason, Meritage Hospitality Group didn't disclose which Bank it received the PPP loan from.

Meritage Hospitality Group was the only restaurant franchisee of the top six restaurant chains.

Second on this list was Ruth's Hospitality Group, which operates 159 luxury dining Ruth's Chris Steak Houses, has 5,740 employees and which received a coveted PPP loan of $20 mil.  In the most recent year, its CEO received Total Compensation of $6.1 Mil.  And it has been very aggressive in buying back its own common stock in the market, frivolously spending $153 mil in the past six years.  JPMorgan Chase was the Bank making the PPP loan.

Third on this list was J. Alexander's Holdings, which operated 47 luxurious dining locations in 16 US States, had 4,200 employees and received a PPP loan of $15.1 mil with the Bank being Pinnacle Bank.

Tied for fourth on this list was Fiesta Restaurant Group, which operates 142 Mexican restaurants in Florida and 164 in Texas, has 10,480 employees and received a $10 mil PPP loan with JPMorgan Chase as the Bank.

Also tied for fourth was Potbelly, which operates 474 sandwich shops, has 6,000 employees and received a $10 mil PPP loan with JPMorgan Chase being the Bank.

Also tied for fourth was Shake Shack, which has a stock market cap of $1.6 bil, has 7,603 employees and received a coveted PPP loan of $10 mil from JPMorgan Chase.

After discovering that it was effectively stealing money from truly small businesses, it ethically and patriotically returned this $10 mil so that truly small businesses would be able to receive it.

So JPMorgan Chase clearly rules the large restaurant chain coveted forgivable PPP loan market.

Now let me do some simple math.

The 52 bloomberg.com publicly-held companies received Total PPP Loans of $254.6 mil, which is a minuscule .0007 or .07 of 1% of the $350 bil First Round Total PPP Loans.  Thus bloomberg.com's six publicly-held Restaurant Chains with PPP Loans of $10 mil or more would equate to roughly 8,571 privately-held Restaurant Chains with PPP Loans of $10 mil or more:

...... i.e. 6 Cos/.0007 = 8,571 Cos

Now that 8,571 privately-held Restaurant Chains with employees of 4,200 or more is clearly overstated mainly because, in these desperate times, there are so many fraudulent PPP loans that have been received by non-publicly-held companies included in the $350 bil number.  And also, the $350 bil number is inflated by the Bank Fee, mostly by JPMorgan Chase's fee.

But it is certainly safe to conclude that there are more than 100 privately-held Restaurant Chains (mainly restaurant franchisees with multiple locations) with more than 1,000 employees which received PPP Loans of $10 mil or more.

And there are also many non-restaurant franchisees/licensees doing likewise ..... Let me address just one group of them ..... Hotel and Motel Chain franchisees/licensees.

The two largest hotel chains in the US are Hilton and Marriott.  From a review of their SEC filings, a clear majority of their hotels are franchised and these franchisees are all privately-held companies and thus they wouldn't be filing financial information with the SEC.

Hilton has 4,631 US franchised properties with the breakdown as follows:

..... Hampton .............. 2,193
..... Hilton Garden Inn .. 682
..... Homewood Suites ...468
..... Home2 Suites ......... 374
..... Double Tree............. 328
..... Embassy Suites........ 207
..... Hilton Hotels........... 178
..... Other Brands .......... 201

..... Total ......................4,631


Marriott didn't disclose its number of US franchised and licensed hotels, but did provide information that lets you get to a reasonably rough  estimate.

Marriott's has 5,205 franchised and licensed hotels worldwide, which represents 71% of its total 7,349 hotel properties worldwide.  It also has 5,396 or 73% of its worldwide hotel properties located in North America.  Thus a rough estimate of its franchised and licensed properties located in the US is 3,500 to 4,000.

There are also many other franchised hotel brands in the US other than Hilton and Marriott, all of which are privately-held companies and thus which don't file financial information with the SEC.

Given that there are somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 US franchised hotel properties in the US and also given that there are a large number of employees in each of these hotels, there have to be more than 20 privately-held franchisee hotel chains in the US with more than 1,000 employees and which received PPP loans of at least $10 mil in the $350 Bil First Round of PPP Loans.  And there could well be up to 50 of them.